Brief Candle
by SlvrSoleAlchmst1
Summary: Ray, depressed by Norman's loss and tangled up in his despair, plays idly with some matches in the library... until the apparition of Norman comes to visit him and remind him to keep fighting.


The flame on the match Ray played with danced, flickered, and then burned his fingers as it ate up the last millimeter of the matchstick. He watched the fire splutter as it ran out of wood to consume, hardly feeling the pain of his blistered skin. When the flame died, he opened the matchbook again, took out a fresh match, and absently struck that one. Up flared more fire that Ray stared at and eventually watched go out against his fingertips.

Ash crumbled onto his lap. The shelves inside the library he occupied alone reared up around him in judgmental silence. But the onlooking shelves didn't understand. They didn't understand the irony in their books that helped drive Ray into his current state, where he just sat playing with matches.

Out, out, brief candle, Shakespeare's Macbeth play had read.

Out, Brief Candle — also a short story by Kurt Vonnegut.

Out, brief candle... like Norman's life when Norman had waltzed to his death. Ray still couldn't believe what Norman had done.

A lot of stories showed Ray that characters experienced the same pain of loss that now he did, the same grief. But those were made up people — and Ray was real. Ray's pain was therefore a lot worse. He took little comfort in finding his own trials recounted in the pages of books he flipped through. The books couldn't slap a balm onto his wounds or cut back the sting of the truth, no matter how he related to them.

Norman wasn't supposed to have died. That was _Ray's _plan; _Ray _was supposed to be the person to go calmly greet his death. Ray had planned it to _save _Norman_._

But now Norman would never be coming back. And no matter how many books Ray read — or faked reading whenever Mama watched him — no matter how he grew to understand that even before the demons had come, humanity had fought with mortality forever and lost, succumbing to death... in the end, nothing was now going to change.

Ray lit another match and watched it burn. He hadn't bothered to turn the lights on in the library this time; the sunset dyed the floor crimson from the window, and that had been enough light to see his way up and into the loft by. And since he wasn't exactly reading anymore, he didn't need a lamp. These tiny flames were just fine.

They burned Ray's fingertips and made spots in his eyes. They dropped ash on his clothing. But it would be fine. The other children were getting ready for dinner and wouldn't wander here to question him. As for Emma? Ray had stopped keeping track of her, and she hadn't sought him out, either. No one would come find him up here for another half hour at least.

The match fizzled out, so Ray lit another. The matchbook emptied quickly, but he had a second one. He'd burn as many matches as he'd lost siblings since coming here, perhaps.

He'd burn the last one for Norman on the night of his birthday, when he planned to die.

Ray settled back more comfortably against the railing of the loft he leaned on. After this, he would take the rest of the matches he'd stolen from Mama's stash back to the hidden place he kept his lighter fuel. That act of defiance alone would finally comfort him.

Norman's life might have expired in a flash. Candles might be brief and might go out. But Ray was going to set a blaze that wouldn't go out so easily as all the lives before his had. His blaze would make up for every little candle of a life that had been lost to this House and the demons outside its gate.

_You two are so warm, _Norman had said. _It was a good life. I was happy._

Ray thought to himself, _Well, Norman... wait until you see how warm — how hot that I can make it be._

His current match snuffed itself out. He couldn't feel his burned fingertips any more. Ray would have to sneak himself some first aid later, make up a story for why he needed treatment if anyone were to ask. It would be careless and stupid if Mama learned he'd burned himself. That would call her mind to fire, and he didn't want that; he didn't want her to have the slightest inkling that he might take interest in flames. If he'd been _truly _smart, Ray wouldn't have allowed the matches to burn him in the first place; if he'd avoided it, he wouldn't need to worry about making up a passable fake story about why his fingers were bandaged. But he somehow hadn't been able to resist indulging with the matches... and hurting himself.

The pain made Ray feel _something. _It proved he was still alive despite how dead inside he felt. It reminded him that _since_ he was alive, he couldn't lose himself in his depression completely. The pain recalled Ray to his goals.

He lit another match and stared at it until the light seemed to burn his retinas. His depression was ninety-nine percent real, debilitating, and terrible — but Ray was going to take that last one percent of resistance that Mama had grown too arrogant now to realize was still there and rip her world to shreds with it. Set Emma free as originally planned. Ray owed at least that much to Norman.

The flame danced, making the book bindings on the shelves around him send up rearing, writhing shadows. With his free hand, Ray absently traced the embossed gold letters on the book that rested in his lap. Would it make him feel better, he wondered, if he used Mama's nicest edition of Shakespeare's Macbeth to begin the conflagration that would destroy himself and the House?

He kind of wanted to. He wanted to make the ink of the words on the pages trickle away under the drip of some lighter fuel, and then watch the book go up just before he did. He didn't like the way the play's lines resonated and seemed to mock his current existence.

_Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,_

_Creeps in this petty pace from day to day..._

A month or so had already passed since Norman had died. And every day now was the same. Lackluster. Empty.

Tiring.

_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools_

_The way to dusty death._

All of Ray's siblings had gone before him. And other children, before he had even been born — countless children, some knowing the truth and some not — because there was no way to break the chain, to end their cattle-like existences. Even Norman had succumbed to the fate. Even Ray couldn't win entirely... because he would still have to die.

If only he could have lived his very last months with Norman. That was all he'd ever wanted.

But no. Norman had ruined that. _Out, out, brief candle!_

Ray smiled hollowly.

_Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,_

_That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,_

_And then is heard no more._

"_It is a tale told by an idiot,_" Ray whispered the rest of the lines, watching his latest match begin to die, "_full of sound and fury... signifying nothing._" The flame snuffed itself out against his fingers.

Ray wanted very much for his final plan to signify more than nothing. In general, Shakespeare hadn't gotten the sad essence of life and death wrong, but Ray remained determined to be the exception who wasn't as sad — to get his revenge despite irrefutable tragedy, to make something more out of his life than the Macbeth lines seems to think possible for poor, pathetic people. But damn — holding on was hard. Ray felt so incredibly old, now, like he'd aged a hundred years in just a month. Weariness had sapped him of the strength to function beyond the bare minimum. If _only _his end could be as straightforward for him as Shakespeare conveyed it was for other helpless mortals. But no. Ray had a job to do. So screw Shakespeare, for making it sound so deceptively simple to die, and for mocking him as he struggled to hang on until his appointed meeting with the reaper.

_Tomorrow, and tomorrow... Fuck you, Shakespeare._

"You're scowling at that Shakespeare book like it's done you the world's worst wrong."

Ray jumped.

But then he settled. It was just Norman's voice that he'd heard — in his head.

God, but Ray was losing his damn mind. How many times had this happened by now? Hearing Norman still, even though Norman was dead... and half the time imagining that he could still _see_ Norman next to him, too. Ray turned his head now, and there Norman was. All pale, soft hair and crinkled eyes in a smile of greeting just for him.

This wasn't normal. If Ray had possessed any mental or physical energy left that he wasn't reserving for the sake of his vengeance, Ray would have asked Mama to get him a doctor or otherwise examine the state of his brain. If he had dementia or something... Well, the demons who wanted to eat and savor his brain surely wouldn't have wanted that. So they'd treat him... and then Ray's hallucinations of Norman would finally go away.

They hurt to have. And maybe Ray wasn't sick in the head at all. Maybe grief just had wild power over the mind, and conjured up sweet lies like this. If that was the case, then at this rate, Emma was probably seeing and hearing the ghost of Norman, too.

How annoyingly Shakespearean, Ray thought.

Maybe he should have snuck time to speak to Emma after all. Maybe the two of them and their illusions could have made three, and it might have felt like Norman hadn't died at all, and they were together again. Might as well have some kind of party — join 'em if he couldn't beat 'em — right?

The imaginary Norman beside him smiled. "Aren't you going to answer me?"

"You're not real," was all Ray said. His voice came out as dry and cracked as his hands were now from holding so many open flames.

"Even so, it's rude to ignore me."

Ray could _hear _the smile in Norman's voice, even if he didn't look at him again. He missed the sound of that smile. He missed the sight of Norman's soft grins and the movement Norman's body made when he unleashed his even softer laughter.

A lump rose into Ray's throat. "Go away, already, and stop coming back. There's no need to torture me like this."

"Are you going to cry again?" Norman asked.

No. Ray's tears were all dried up. All he had left now was despair, desperation, and his fueling anger. Ten days of crying for more hours than he could count immediately after Norman had left through the gate had been enough for one twelve-year lifetime. Enough of a sendoff for the boy Ray had loved.

Any more wouldn't serve Ray's plans or purposes, so he didn't plan to cave to the instigation, or to the temptation to cry further when Norman's question made him want to.

"I don't need you here," Ray said. "I'll see you in the afterlife. So go."

But Norman didn't disappear. He simply leaned back on the railing of the loft beside Ray, pulling his knees up, wrapping his arms around them, and staring at the shelves of books. The light from the sunset had nearly disappeared. The sound of distantly clattering dishes sounded from the kitchen through the floors and the walls.

Ray didn't light any more matches. Someone would come to get him soon. But there wouldn't be much point in that.

He didn't want to eat dinner.

"Shakespeare must have been wonderful," Norman said. "I would have liked to talk to him, and go see a play at the Globe."

Ray glowered at the book of Tragedies in his lap that included Macbeth. "I hate him."

Norman lifted an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because he's too real."

A chuckle served as Norman's reply. The sound made Ray's stomach flip, his chest tighten.

Was Ray remembering the sound of Norman's chuckle right, and rendering it correctly in his imagination? What if, in reality, it had been a slightly different sound? As January 15th neared and more time passed since Norman's death, would Ray forget more and more about Norman? Would he be able to call up less and less detail? And Emma, who would live... What about her, as _years _went by? Would she stop being able to recall the exact blue shade of Norman's eyes? Start remembering the sound of Norman's voice all wrong, if she remained able to call it up at all? Human brains were great at torture and grief, but not the best at memory without explicit practice — especially when the person one aimed to remember didn't exist any more to use as an occasional reminder or reference.

"Norman."

"Mm?"

"Let me hold your hand," Ray said.

It was a cruel trick he played — on both himself and his imaginary Norman. But it usually worked to make Norman disappear when nothing else Ray did banished him.

And right now, as it always went, Norman hesitated. Ray watched Norman turn his head from the bookshelves and back to Ray's face, lift his hand... and then let the hand drop back onto his lap.

Norman couldn't touch Ray anywhere, and he knew it. _Ray_ knew it. The touch would just sink right through Ray's body, no matter where Norman tried to connect. There'd be no warmth. It wasn't real. And usually, bitter acknowledgement of it ended their conversation — because both of them got sad and couldn't bear to stay in each other's presences anymore, so close and yet so far apart, separated by the realm of death, by Ray's dreams and delusions.

But this time, Norman didn't disappear.

Startled, Ray met Norman's eyes and found all this current Norman manifestation did was flash another smile.

Ray glared. So this Norman would be extra cruel — sticking around when he wasn't wanted, tempting Ray even longer with what wasn't real. Fantastic.

Norman's whisper filled the library loft. "Does the sight of me infect your eyes?"

Ray snorted at the Shakespearean language Norman chose to use.

Norman said, "_Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine._"

"Stop quoting Shakespeare at me." This was too much. Just too annoying.

"You know the play it's from, though," Norman said. "We read it together one evening — Richard III. You remind me right now of act one, scene two, where Richard is confronting Anne, who wants nothing to do with him. When he tells Anne he's fallen for her pretty eyes, she says she wishes her eyes were basilisks, so they could strike him dead."

Ray grunted. Yes, he recalled. But he didn't see the point in bringing up the play. If Norman wanted to give Ray a hard time, he could have picked another topic. Anything but damn Shakespeare. "You're saying I look as grouchy right now as Anne does in that scene?" he said. "That my eyes are shooting you a death glare?" Ray grunted again. That simply wasn't _possible_.

Norman was already dead. So no look of Ray's could kill him.

Ray buried his face in his hands and took three or four long, deep breaths. _Don't break down, _he told himself. _Don't remember the look in his eyes when he walked off with his suitcase next to Mama, and you _knew _he still didn't want to die. Don't think about the way you didn't say goodbye, don't think about not being strong enough to save him, about the way you let him go..._

Norman stayed quiet a moment. Then, when Ray finally regained control of himself and looked back, glaring anew, Norman's lips quirked up another time. He settled back against the railing, matching Ray's posture. His murmur sounded melodic and soft. "_Now they kill me with a living death. Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears."_

"You're the one who's making _me _want to cry," Ray muttered. All of this was too much for him.

"_My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear; And what these sorrows—" _Norman gestured around at the library, at the matchbook at Ray's side, at the whole of the House,_ "—could not thence exhale, thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping."_

"Are you an idiot?" Ray asked. He sniffed and tried to sound annoyed, confident. "Don't blame my _looks_ for it if you want to start bawling. It would make more sense if you _did _cry at the tragedy of this farm, this house. That's more worth sobbing over — so quit pretending to be Richard in love and ogling Anne too much, dumbass."

"But I really do feel like I relate," Norman said. "I so rarely cried when I was alive... I had a panic attack or two once I realized I'd go get eaten for your sake and Emma's... but I didn't cry. But _you_... you make me want to cry. It's because I care about you—" Ray swallowed "—and that feeling is so powerful on seeing you again in front of me that I can hardly keep it together, that's all."

That had to be some damn kind of projecting. That was how _Ray _felt, seeing the imaginary ghost of Norman manifest. How pathetic that his brain would conjure a Norman that told him such sweet nothings, but that also said what Ray wanted to say but still possessed too much pride to.

"What is this?" Norman reached for Ray's hand next, the one with the two fingers Ray had burned to blistering on the matches. "Why aren't you taking care of yourself like you should be?"

Norman still couldn't actually take Ray's hand, but when his fingers passed waveringly through Ray's like magic, Ray felt his burned fingertips throb — as if in some form of acknowledgment.

All he did was scowl back at Norman. "Who are you to lecture me?" He laughed emptily, remarking Norman's hypocrisy. "You went off and _died_, when I was doing everything I could to save you. You sacrificed yourself even though Emma and I begged you not to _and_ hatched alternative plans you could have executed to avoid dying. You have no right to tell me I don't care enough about myself... when _you're_ the king of throwing yourself away."

Norman chuckled again on seeing Ray's scowl. "_Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it were made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt._"

"Shut up."

"_If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, lo—_" Norman mimed handing Ray something, "_here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword, which if thou please to hide in this true breast—_" Norman touched his chest, to indicate where Ray should strike him, "_—and let the soul forth that adoreth thee—_"

"That's enough." Ray's grip tightened on the book in his lap. "There's no point in trying to win me over by telling me you would willingly let me kill you, to make up for your having pissed me off." There was no need for Shakespearean melodrama between them, no need for references to it; if Norman had something to say, he should say it to Ray flat out. "Just make whatever point you're here for," Ray said, "and go."

"Please don't stay mad at me, Ray. I'll make it up to you." Norman spoke in monotone.

A beat passed. "_How?"_ Ray's voice cracked. He cleared his throat and sat straighter. "How can you do _anything _now?" God, Norman was dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

"If you can just hang on, you'll see."

Wasn't he _already_ hanging on, if only by a thread? How much more did he had to cling? Did Norman think Ray intended to give up in the end? Did he look _that_ weary and that bad right now?

Maybe he'd let his depression go a little too far after all. Ray couldn't think of the last time he'd gone outside, or even had a bath...

The creak of the library door sounded. A crack of light spilled in from the hallway, but it didn't reach where Ray sat in the loft.

The shadow that blocked the hall light next formed a silhouette that Ray knew well. The tread as someone came into the room also told Ray who it was.

Mama had come in.

Ray slowly, quietly slid the matchbooks out of sight. He'd need to clear his lap of ashes, too, but in the darkness right now Mama wouldn't see them — so it was better not to move too much or otherwise make it sound like he hustled to hide evidence of something he shouldn't have been doing.

"Ray?"

Ray didn't answer right away. He glanced at Norman instead, amazed the image of him remained there. Usually, if Ray were intruded upon or startled, Norman tended to disappear — because Ray's concentration on projecting him got interrupted beyond repair.

"You'll be all right, Ray," Norman whispered.

And then Norman _did _disappear, when Mama's footsteps came nearer.

Damn it. Ray loathed Mama and her infernal, constant, smothering presence so much. Norman hadn't even gotten to say what he'd manifested for in the first place, after all the torture his presence had been. Ray had sat through his teasing for nothing as Mama had startled him after all.

What a pain in the ass — both Norman and Mama. Ray shut his eyes and sighed, after staring a beat at the empty spot Norman had left behind.

"Ray, are you here?" Now Mama raised a lamp she'd brought with her, and the glow finally fell to reveal Ray's profile.

He grunted. "Yeah."

"It's dinner time."

Ray hesitated, and then decided to play even more listless than he had before. He wanted to see if he could push Mama into breaking her matronly mask enough that he could determine her true mood tonight. Decipher whether she still had suspicions that he might rebel. "What's the point?" he asked her, flat.

A pause passed, and Ray concluded Mama waited to speak until her voice wouldn't betray the smirk she probably indulged. "Still not feeling well? But you'll improve a bit if you eat. Come down."

"What's the point," Ray asked again, unmoving, "if I'm just going to die, Mama?"

But this time, Mama did not grow smug over her victory in breaking him with Norman's death, emptily soothing him with honeyed words that only told Ray she felt triumphant. Instead, she became impatient; she tisked under her breath. Ray decided that meant she must be feeling tense and uncertain about him to some degree, even though she couldn't put her finger logically on why she should be. In other words, she still employed caution and felt suspicious that Ray would try to wreck her shipment plans. "You're merchandise," Mama said. "And you need to be in top condition. Don't start acting out now and ruining your body by moping and not eating. What would the point in _that _be?"

Ray laughed petulantly, then sighed as if the act took all his energy. "I was only keeping myself in top condition before because I thought I could help Emma and Norman escape. But you arranged to have Headquarters order Norman's shipment, have him killed early, before me... because you wanted to break me — right? Well, you did. So I don't see how you can whine like a kid about it to me now, if you've realized it's just blowing up in your face. If you didn't want my quality to decline, you should have thought more about how it would affect my mental state and thus my physical one before you took Norman away."

Mama's step sounded again as she came toward the stairs of the loft. "I won't take this attitude from you."

Ray moved immediately. If he let Mama come too close, then she'd see in her lamp light the ash on his lap and find the matchbooks, certainly. He rose quickly, his back to her. The ash fell forward off his lap and to the floor in front of him. Ray stepped on the mess next, grounding it into the grain of the wooden floorboards as he pivoted to face Mama — using the grand motion to hide the smaller act of shoving the matchbooks into hiding as well, one deep in his pocket and one up his sleeve. He kept the book with Macbeth and the other Tragedies tucked under one arm casually.

Then, hands crammed in his pockets the way he often stood — to hide the burn marks on his fingertips from her, too — he looked down his nose and down the loft stairs at Mama staring up at him.

He said, "I don't care if you like my attitude or not. You don't need me anymore, right? You broke off our bargain... and then took away the one thing I was fighting for. What incentive do I have to do a single thing you say anymore? If I want to sit here and rot, I'm going to." He sneered and added, "Go away."

Mama considered his uncommonly-used vitriol for a long time before she replied to it — trying to judge, Ray knew, how much of his words and body language were some kind of calculated act designed to manipulate her into or out of something. Trying to make sure she outwitted him.

Ray exhaled lightly out his nose. Mama's caution and over-analysis might be the death of her in under a month now — and good riddance. Right now, Ray wasn't trying to manipulate much of anything. He just wanted Mama not to notice his match game, and to believe him still depressed, and now fed up and childishly resistant. Like his grouchiness now was all he could muster because she'd so defeated him.

"Like Emma," Mama finally said, smiling tightly, "you should have known it was futile to resist as long as you did. Come eat — and live your last days happily, in plenty, _without _such tiresome resistance. It's not such a bad life for you children, Ray."

"I'm not resisting any more," Ray spat. "But I'm not going to make it _easy_ for you to ship me out for consumption, either. Go to hell." And with that, he spun back around — further grinding the ashes out of sight — and plunked himself back on his ass in the loft.

Then he waited with bated breath to see whether Mama would leave.

Mama paused, but then swung the lamp light away. "Have it your way for a while longer, then."

"Thanks." The sarcastic tone echoed around the library.

Her footsteps began to retreat, but then stopped. "But Norman wouldn't want you to suffer like this," she added, her words purposefully silken. "He told Emma to keep eating, before he left. Norman would want you to take care of yourself also—"

"You have no right to speak his name — so shut up."

Mama just tisked and shook her head. But when Ray glanced over, he could see his disrespect had made her furious at last; the tension in her shoulders and her death-grip on the lamp made it obvious. "Go to bed early at least," she exclaimed, working to keep her tone neutral, "because tomorrow, Ray, I will strap you to a chair and force feed you until you no longer look so emaciated, if I must." Ray opened his mouth to protest, but Mama talked over him. "I've already done it to Emma once, when she slipped for two days despite Norman's last wishes. Now she eats her meals again like a good little girl... even when the food tastes like cardboard to her in her despair."

Ray faltered. Mama was abusing Emma?

Rage made Ray see a flash of red in the darkness for a long second. But he needed to keep pretending that Emma didn't concern him — that she meant nothing to him now that Norman was not around to act as the bridge between them. He drew a slow, deep breath Mama couldn't see and feigned being affected by her threats; he made his voice waver on purpose. "I still have my pride, you know. If you really mean that... then I'll eat later, of my own volition, after everyone has gone to bed. I just don't want to deal with the others laughing and talking across their plates when I'm fighting to forget the truth of Norman on a _demon's_ dish."

Lightness returned to both Mama's voice and her step. "I see. Very well. I'll leave some of your favorite bread pudding for you, in that case. Good night."

_Monster,_ Ray wanted to snarl. Mama _knew _the bread pudding had never been a dessert Ray had allowed to pass his lips. He hated the stuff. But he'd always taken a portion anyway, because it was _Norman's _favorite. Ray had always passed his portion off to Norman.

The library door closed again behind Mama when she left. Ray balled one hand in to a fist to prevent it from trembling.

A voice said, "Ah, the bread pudding again. You really should go eat with them. Or at least, bring some back for me, like you used to."

Ray turned again to gape at the shadowy outline of Norman that had reappeared in the darkness. "S-stop giving me such a hard time," he rasped, barely believing the apparition had come back. "You can't eat now, anyway." His imaginary Norman remained awfully persistent tonight. What was the deal?

"_Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"_

Now Norman was quoting an inconsequential line from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. How tedious.

Norman was saying that just because Ray was acting like a goody-two-shoes by avoiding sustenance didn't mean everyone else had to forfeit their enjoyment also. Norman wanted the damn bread pudding despite being an illusion.

Ray rolled his eyes. Then his stomach growled.

Maybe, in the end, Norman had a point. Maybe if Ray ate something, a little of his strength would come back... and then his mind wouldn't be able to play as many tricks on him like this. Maybe then he could finally banish this false rendition of his dead best friend.

Ray glanced again at the Shakespeare book still in his grip and finally dropped it to the floor. He stood.

Norman said, "Leave the matches, too." He must think Ray likely to burn himself some more.

Ray didn't want to give the matches up. "I don't want Mama to find them in here if she comes to investigate."

"She'd be more likely to find them tonight in your clothes."

"Why?" Ray scowled and turned again to look Norman dead in the eyes. So blue. And so amused right now. Amused and condescending. This damn apparition was _arguing _with him. What a pain. "I'm not going to take a bath, or even bother to wear my pajamas to bed if I finally do sleep," Ray exclaimed.

Norman just tilted his head and smiled, stating bluntly, "Oh yes, you are. You are going to do both those things, after you eat — bathe and sleep. Please do. Okay?"

Ray flushed, grumbled, then sniffed his clothes. Surely Norman wasn't suggesting he smelled bad? He'd barely moved the last few days, so even if he hadn't bathed...

Then Ray shook his head. Why was he letting imaginary Norman get to him? He ran a hand hard down his face. The real Norman — if he were alive — would _laugh_ if he knew how true-to-life even Ray's fevered conjuring of him was; this unreal Norman stayed as persistent and formidable as the real one would have been. God, it drove Ray crazy.

And apparently Ray had been mistaken in worrying that he would forget what Norman had been like. Even when candles went out, they left behind signs of themselves. The whiff of smoke in the air. A smudge of charring. Residual warmth.

Norman was with him, inside him always.

Ray sighed and took his turn in quoting Shakespeare. "_Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; so ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes._"

Norman blinked in surprise, and then folded his arms. "From Love's Labour's Lost," he said. "Act one, scene one, Berowne's lines — basically conveying that too much reading blinds people from the truth and buries them in despair. So... you're agreeing, then? That you need to go eat, and then take a bath? And sleep instead of staying in the library? You're agreeing to take action that might actually help you feel better?"

A beat passed, in which Ray just lifted one eyebrow and shrugged, to acknowledge that Norman was correct. If Ray let himself rot in the library any more, choosing wallowing — pain — over even the basic pleasure of eating, that wouldn't do him any good. He'd never get his revenge that way; Norman was right. "_What do you read, my lord?_" Ray asked in monotone, and then, even more boredly, he replied, "_Words, words, words._" From Hamlet this time, when Hamlet expressed he read a lot — and yet the reading seemed to mean nothing in the greater scope of that scene.

Norman chuckled, then asked fondly, "You actually _love_ Shakespeare... don't you?"

Ray just took the matchbooks from his pocket and hid them well amongst the books on the shelves — far enough from any of William Minerva's that even if Mama _did_ find the matches, her attention wouldn't be drawn to those important tomes. Then he turned and put his foot on the first ladder step down from the loft. "Do you want to come to dinner with me?" he asked Norman, smirking.

Norman grinned back just as hard and leaned on one of the bookshelves. "I'd better not. We probably can't have you talking to yourself in front of the others."

"Mm. I'm not actually a Shakespeare character," Ray said. "So there's no way I'd get away with something like that without some weird or tiresome repercussion. And you... you aren't one either, despite appearing like one of Shakespeare's ghosts. So you can't really go anywhere." His candle had gone out for good.

Ray reached the bottom of the ladder and looked back up, to where his image of Norman still stood, wavering. "Still..." Ray said, his throat feeling tight, "come watch the final act and scene of the House, on the night of my birthday, Norman."

Norman only smiled sadly.

"Promise it," Ray insisted stupidly. As if this Norman wasn't controlled by his own willful and desperate subconscious, perfectly manipulatable in the end.

Norman picked up and lit a match, although the actual matchbook Ray had hidden didn't move. The light of the flame flickered across Norman's face. "_O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene!"_

Henry V in reply? How annoying.

"Whatever," Ray grumbled. But still he hesitated at the library door.

He felt better than he had when he'd been chain-lighting matches earlier. But it still hurt, to think of Norman dead. It twisted in his heart, in a place he couldn't numb with physical pain.

It hurt now to leave even Norman's illusion behind.

But at least here, Ray could say goodbye — the way he'd been too prideful to on the night Norman had left to die.

Before Ray could open his mouth, Norman delivered the lines Ray had planned to — from Shakespeare's romantic play about two lovers torn apart by death. "_Good night, good night!" _Norman told him._ "Parting is such sweet sorrow."_

Ray swallowed. He turned away before his pretend Norman could see moisture form in his eyes. "Good night, Norman." He opened the library door. "And goodbye."

The tiny flame from the match behind him flickered out.

Ray did not see Norman again — until the night of his birthday, when he finally set the House on fire. But it wasn't until after Emma had cut off his ear and led him to the wall as a part of the escape.

From the top of the wall, with his back toward the cliff, Ray listened to Emma give instructions to the fifteen children over four years old. She spoke too loudly, perhaps thanks to her missing ear or the gauze now clamped over it. Ray raised a hand to his own bandage, still dizzy with his disbelief... and the pain. The pain that reminded him he was...

Alive. He was actually still alive.

The glow of the blazing House far away above the candlesticks of the farm's trees looked like the smallest of flames when he gaped at it, hardly believing he was here.

Beside him, Norman smiled — while Ray blinked new tears from his eyes.

"_Out_," Norman murmured beside his good ear, while Emma helped the small children across their makeshift zip-lines. "_Out, brief candle... _Congratulations, Ray. The House is going out. You're going to live long past twelve now, until you are old and gray... and the suffering that happened in this place will be a mere flicker in comparison to everything else amazing you're finally about to see. You did it, Ray. You and Emma. You're free."

Ray shivered... but then he laughed, with his knees shaking in relief.


End file.
